From 2x 570's to 1x 7970. Could NOT be happier.

H

Hitmanthe3rd

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 13, 2010
Messages
459
I'm just here to let everybody know how happy I am with this single card. I am playing BF3 on ultra everything, 4x AA, motion blur on, FOV max, 16x AF and HBAO in Eyefinity. I am getting 25-35 frames and these 25-35 frames feels like 60 on my 2 cards. I am getting 25-35 and could NOT be happier. I am insanely impressed with this card and do not think I will be purchasing another because $559 doesnt justify another 30 frames and microstuttering haha. Just came here to let you all know how satisfied I am! That is all! Back to BF3!
 
Did the same exact upgrade my self. Seeing the 2.6g of v ram used playing Bf3 shows how crippling the 570s were across 3 screens.
 
So the 570s in SLI wasn't able to keep up with the game? What resolution are you running?
 
Skillz said:
So the 570s in SLI wasn't able to keep up with the game? What resolution are you running?
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5760x1080. 3 1080p screens. on my 570's I was running medium to low with SSAO, no AA, no AF, getting about 40-60 with microstuttering
 
Skillz said:
So probably a driver issue?
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I had the same setup as he did and got the same frames. 570s just have so little v ram that they cant handle 3 screens. so not really a driver problem.

As for the OP comment about microstuttering, I to didn't really notice how bad it was till I switched to a single 7970 from 570s. Dont know that I can ever go back to two cards again seeing as the 30 frames on one card are as smooth as the 60 on 2
 
Wow, so a single 7970 is playable in Eyefinity on BF3. I was debating on upgrading my single GTX 570 to a 7970, or get the iPad 3 if it comes out soon.

Although, after seeing this post I am pretty much sold on 7970. If BF3 is playable in Eyefinity with the same monitor configuration I have....how could I say no to that?! :p
 
Most likely a VRAM issue. 570 SLI is considerably faster than a 7970 in terms of raw power.

I'm not sure I could say that 25 FPS in BF3 is playable, though...
 
MavericK96 said:
Most likely a VRAM issue. 570 SLI is considerably faster than a 7970 in terms of raw power.

I'm not sure I could say that 25 FPS in BF3 is playable, though...
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yeah pretty curious as how 25FPS is doable...?? :confused:
 
MavericK96 said:
Most likely a VRAM issue. 570 SLI is considerably faster than a 7970 in terms of raw power.

I'm not sure I could say that 25 FPS in BF3 is playable, though...
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Indeed but 25-30 without micro stutter is better than 25-30 with.
 
Well yeah, but before he was playing with 40-60 FPS, albeit with lowered settings.

Even with the lowered settings I'm not sure you'd still get 40-60 FPS on that setup, though.
 
MavericK96 said:
Well yeah, but before he was playing with 40-60 FPS, albeit with lowered settings.

Even with the lowered settings I'm not sure you'd still get 40-60 FPS on that setup, though.
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But he said he was not happy because of the MicroS
 
OP: Get MSI After burner and overclock that sucker!!

I hate MS in SLI and Xfire. I'd much rather have a 7970 than two of anything except maybe two 3gb 580's or two 3gb 7950s
 
jaredpace said:
OP: Get MSI After burner and overclock that sucker!!

I hate MS in SLI and Xfire. I'd much rather have a 7970 than two of anything except maybe two 3gb 580's or two 3gb 7950s
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Did a similar upgrade here too, except I went to 3x 7970. No MS at all from what I can see. Never had microstutter with my SLI 570s either though. Was just hitting the VRAM wall with them. The trifire setup is AMAZING!
 
BostonHXC said:
Did a similar upgrade here too, except I went to 3x 7970. No MS at all from what I can see. Never had microstutter with my SLI 570s either though. Was just hitting the VRAM wall with them. The trifire setup is AMAZING!
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3 GPUs reduce MS, more time to even out the frame times.
 
Final8ty said:
3 GPUs reduce MS, more time to even out the frame times.
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That is interesting. News to me. So three midrange cards like say the 560 2gb or 6950 2gb work smoother for a single screen than a 2 card solution? Hmmm.
 
BostonHXC said:
Did a similar upgrade here too, except I went to 3x 7970. No MS at all from what I can see. Never had microstutter with my SLI 570s either though. Was just hitting the VRAM wall with them. The trifire setup is AMAZING!
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No MS here either on xfire 7970s. I run single screen, haven't tried eyefinity yet.
 
I'v been playing with 25-35 FPS and it plays Fantastic. When I downed graphics to get 60fps I could not tell the difference. and when I could it was not very drastic. I'll probably pick up a second card eventually but as of right now I am more than happy with what I have.
 
Can I ask why you didn't wait for Kepler? Is SLI troublesome? I'm switching from crossfire and I'm not sure SLI is better.
 
Actually, I went from 6950 crossfire...to hd 7970...to GTX 480 SLI. At my res., I couldn't be happier. Better minimums. 8-10 fps better.
 
aoya said:
Can I ask why you didn't wait for Kepler? Is SLI troublesome? I'm switching from crossfire and I'm not sure SLI is better.
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The 7970's are just so nice I couldnt wait for Keplar. I'm not a fanboy. I love Nvidia and this is my first AMD card but I am blown away by how great it is with Eyefinity compared to NvSurround. NVsorround is like an alpha build of Eyefinity. The main reason I switched was Eyefinity 2.0. and of course the delicious 3gbs of memory :D

SLI was great dont kid me wrong. It's easy to setup and very friendly. I loved my 570's.
 
Congrats on your new card! OC that bad boy a bit and you'll love it even more. I have messed with multi card setups and although I generally was pleased, a powerful single card is still my preference. I sold both my 6870's and 6950's I had in crossfire and have a single OC'd 7950 that I use for 2560x1600. Absolutely love it!
 
Sli 570s to xfire 7970s. No microstutter on either platforms...1 screen or eyefinity.

1920x1200 Ultra, FXAA High, 4x MSAA. avg fps arpund 90-120 never dipping below 70 with the 7970s. Same settings except for 2x MSAA for the 570s, avg fps 50-60, sometime dipping below 40 in big battles.

Very satisfied with the upgrade and luckily no driver issues so far.
 
inglewood78 said:
Sli 570s to xfire 7970s. No microstutter on either platforms...1 screen or eyefinity.

1920x1200 Ultra, FXAA High, 4x MSAA. avg fps arpund 90-120 never dipping below 70 with the 7970s. Same settings except for 2x MSAA for the 570s, avg fps 50-60, sometime dipping below 40 in big battles.

Very satisfied with the upgrade and luckily no driver issues so far.
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lol, I did the exact same thing, only in 1080p. I had 570s SLI and I had to set MSAA down to 2x and dipped below 40 fps, but it's a stuttery fps. I sold that to get a single 7970 and that was great already. No stutter, but it did give me dips into the 40s, however a smooth 40s, not a stuttery and choppy 40 fps. I missed the higher raw power from SLI 570s which put me above 60fps most of the time so I picked up a second 7970. Could not be happier.
 
Overclocked to 1125 (In 25 increments) and got a lock up in OCCT. Clocked down to 1100 and got a lock up. Clocked to 1075 with no lockups and no issues, Ran Heaven and Metro 2033 benchmarks and got about 2.6 more frames than I had before (Went from 25.2 to 27.8. Think I'll just stay stock haha. I dont want to fool with voltages and memory.
 
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BostonHXC said:
Did a similar upgrade here too, except I went to 3x 7970. No MS at all from what I can see. Never had microstutter with my SLI 570s either though. Was just hitting the VRAM wall with them. The trifire setup is AMAZING!
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Microstutter is there, you just haven't noticed it. My advice would be to stop looking for it because once noticed you'll be annoyed.
 
I did a similar upgrade from dual 6870s to a single 7970.
I am having the same experience as you.
 
spaceman said:
That is interesting. News to me. So three midrange cards like say the 560 2gb or 6950 2gb work smoother for a single screen than a 2 card solution? Hmmm.
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you cant sli more then 2 on the 560 series. only 570 and 580's
 
I ran on 2 6970's for about 6 months and never noticed any microstuttering.

My theory is that microstutter appears when one video card has significantly more bus bandwidth than the other, or is otherwise somehow delayed (like one of th ecardsbeing attached to a PCIe port that goes through the chipset, and one connected to PCIe lanes that go directly to the CPU.

With my setup, both 6970's were connected to 16x lanes, that went directly to the CPU. I'm thinking this explains the lack of microstutter.

That being said, even without microstutter, SLI/Crossfire will still be worse than a single GPU at the same frame rate. Firstly, there are usually issues with more erratic frame rate, where it is more stable on a single GPU, and secondly you have the issue of multi-GPU input lag, best illustrated in this image from a 1999 review of the Rage Fury Maxx (first dual GPU single card) vs. the Geforce 256.

Both had the same framerate, but one had significantly more input lag than the other.

lag.gif


This is an inherent problem that can not be avoided whenever using AFR. In order to get the same experience as with a single strong GPU, two GPU's in AFR mode need to have almost 50% faster frame rates.

The problem can be mitigated by forcing one of the many split frame/scissor frame/supertiling modes, but many games will not render properly when you do this, and it does not scale as well as AFR (which is why everyone pushes AFR. Classic case of Marketing winning out over Engineering).

This is why I tend to prefer strong single GPU setups over weaker multi-gpu setups. the only time I go multi-GPU is if one of the strongest single GPU boards available on the market is not sufficient. Then I have no other choice.

For right now, I feel a single 7970 (if modded with better cooling, and overclocked highly enough) will be sufficient at 2560x1600 for the games I play. But that might not be the case for long...
 
harmattan said:
Microstutter is there, you just haven't noticed it. My advice would be to stop looking for it because once noticed you'll be annoyed.
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I was going to say the same thing. If you don't notice MS just go watch someone with one card play the same game.
 
ilemon said:
I was going to say the same thing. If you don't notice MS just go watch someone with one card play the same game.
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+1

My wife's rig and mine are similar but she plays on one screen while I play in eyefinity. I run 6970's in x-fire while she has a single 6950 and at the same framerate hers looks so much more fluid in the same exact games. I've even tested by putting both rigs to the lowest video settings and changing mine to play on a single screen.

I'm on the verge of selling my two cards and grabbing a 7970 or waiting till Green releases their new line and then make the decision.
 
I get perfectly smooth frames in BF3 at 2560x1600.. although I do realize that I have more vRAM and 5160x1080 is 50% more pixels..
 
harmattan said:
Microstutter is there, you just haven't noticed it. My advice would be to stop looking for it because once noticed you'll be annoyed.
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It would be very hard to notice with 3 cards as its virtually gone and even singe cards can displays the same characteristics at times.

crossfireslistutteringwm.png


Green line is 2 cards and the red 3 cards, notice that the single card blue has its moments as well and that the red deviation is not greater in amplitude than the blue but only continuous, also worse case scenario is at 30fps which most multi GPU users game above.
Drivers, card generation, the actual game and individual setup can effect MS greatly.

We repeated this same test using a number of games yielding different average frame rates. So long as the average is above 30 FPS, the resulting output is almost stutter-free. Minor differences in when frames hit the screen are not apparent, and so they don't bother us at all. The experience is similar to using a single GPU.

After analyzing the dual-card configuration, this is certainly not what we were expecting.

Interim Assessment

Amazingly, the three-way setup has a tremendous advantage over two cards in CrossFire. Additionally, it costs less than the dual-GPU GeForce GTX 590 and Radeon HD 6990 cards, too. Of course, the average frame rate only really increased about 20% compared to a Radeon HD 6870 X2, and 420 W worth of power draw is no small figure. It'd take an overclocked Radeon HD 6990 to top that.
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